I'm the Chief Product Officer of Forbes Media. It's been a long journey: The New York Times, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, a little tabloid TV, AOL -- and I certainly don't want to forget TMZ. I lived through a newspaper strike (sounds quaint, right?), the New York City Black Out in '77, and my bout with the Cabbage Patch Dolls. I was the founder and CEO of True/Slant, which FORBES invested in and acquired four years ago. I got hooked on the News business as the student editor of The Daily Iowan during the days of Vietnam, Watergate and Roe v. Wade. I can quote all the best lines from "All the President's Men," and I still think Howard Beale did it better than all the real-life pretenders who followed him. I owe so much to James Bellows -- a truly gifted editor, an extraordinary human being and a mentor who was always there for me.

Inside Forbes: Our Content Strategy, Brand Power and the Path Forward

Over its 93 years as a major force in the media business, Forbes has offered news consumers authoritative journalism with a clear and strong voice. We are unabashed champions of free enterprise. We celebrate the spirit of entrepreneurialism. We chronicle the ups and downs of corporate America and the people who pull its levers. We are the drama critics of capitalism around the world. We track and measure the wealth of individuals — and watch how they enjoy the results of hard work. We are about success.

The worlds we write about move faster than ever, producing stress, disruption and opportunity. Our very own news industry is in the midst of unnerving change:

– Who and what is a journalist when anyone can publish content or create a news stream for their friends? – What’s the best and most equitable way to compensate reporters and other content creators? – How do advertisers (content creators themselves) better connect with and engage news consumers? – In an era of social media, what’s the future role of storied media brands that have served the public interest so well for so long?

I’ve lived through the changing media landscape for more than 35 years. I banged out copy on the very first CRTs as a college newspaper editor in the early 70′s. I lugged around a Teleram Portabubble, with a 300-baud modem and an acoustic coupler, as an editor at The New York Times in the early 80′s. Then I joined Newsweek as it was coping with the twin births of 24-hour cable news and USA Today’s “McPaper” approach to journalism. In the 90′s, I got a taste of writing for tabloid television news during its heyday, then worked for a guy who built a computer magazine empire on niche advertising. As the millennium turned, I jumped head first into digital media and the roller coaster that was AOL, then started an online news platform company as the decade came to a close.

I’ve been lucky. I’ve seen a lot and learned even more from the smartest people in both traditional and digital media. As one who embraces change, being at Forbes at this very moment in time is exhilarating. Forbes had the courage to dive into the Web in the late 1990s while most of Big Media watched and waited. Now, we are moving ahead again by building a unique content engine for a new era, believing strongly that authoritative journalism, our nearly 100-year-old mission and the tenets of social media can together create a far more engaging and rewarding experience for business news consumers, journalists and our marketing partners.

Forbes is a traditional media brand. We are proud of our heritage, our values and our standards. We are not trying to be like the Huffington Post or Politico or Gawker — or like any other emerging digital brand that has leveraged the powerful tools of a new era. Still, it’s been a difficult few years for us as the news business copes with wrenching transition. Our need to change, adapt and adjust is driven as much by industry economics as it is by technology and generational shifts. Newer audiences access, consume and interact differently with news and information. Our message remains as strong as ever, perhaps more so in a society that increasingly puts its hopes and dreams in the agile thinking of entrepreneurs. But today’s creators of industries, companies and jobs — along with their audiences — have different attitudes about success. Sure wealth and riches are great, but what impact have you had?

I’ve lived more than half my journalistic career inside the Big Media bubble. It’s a place where little is honestly revealed and few are allowed in. We want to share the next stage of our exciting journey, to be as transparent as possible about where Forbes is headed and why. We are humbled by the trust people place in our business journalism. As we innovate, we hope to hear from you so we can learn from you. With that knowledge and creative new ways of doing things, we can build the very best products for our loyal Forbes readers — and new ones, too. As it all unfolds, a venerable media brand will grow that much stronger.

What’s New So Far

It has been a busy five months at Forbes:

– In August, we launched Phase 1 of a new digital publishing platform that jump-started our efforts to scale a new model for content creation.

– In November, we introduced AdVoice, a program that opens up our digital and print platforms so marketers, clearly labeled and identified as such, can publish content and join the conversation.

– In December, we released Names You Need to Know, a curated and crowdsourced Web and print project that enabled news consumers to participate in the development of the Dec. 20 issue of Forbes magazine by posting their ideas and suggestions online then sharing those contributions on their social streams.

All this is just the beginning of an iterative re-build of Forbes.com, further enhancements to Forbes magazine (such as perfect binding), an upcoming new mobile experience and additional iPad apps. Here’s more of what’s to come, including peeks at soon-to-be-launched Web pages, some early results and the broader thinking behind much of what we’re up to.

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I appreciate what you’re doing at Forbes on so many levels. One is the holistic approach to your content initiative. In so many cases, content change is done haphazardly and without any consideration of the end product or how the pieces work together — a little tweak here, a little tweak there — in an attempt to jump on a digital trend. Clearly, you get it. I also appreciate your commitment to respect content creators, their knowledge and the craft of good writing. Your strategy to “produce great content and strengthen our audience” cannot be accomplished without smart, capable people who also can string together well-written sentences in a logical manner. Thank you for recognizing this oft-overlooked aspect of content creation. My hope is that your model will inspire others who also are trying to figure out how to be successful in today’s complex media environment, and make my search for knowledge and my reading experience less painful than it has become in the last few years.

Thx so much for your interest. We have a long way to go, and we learn something every day about the “path forward.” I am very committed to the journalistic values and standards that we both believe in.

Great read. Really interesting and innovative approaches to journalism. One question: How do you finance it? By print income and then ‘just’ advertising online? No paid-content? Is everything online free for the consumer? And how much of the content in the magazine (in percent) won’t be online at all? Hope to hear from you. I work with journalism in Denmark. Best regard, Pernille

Frankly, this is an extremely risky strategy to take Forbes. Forbes’ issue is not eyeball hits – you get millions a month. Your main problem is generating revenue online while maintaining costs low enough that you make a profit. I see the savings costs by letting so many contributors get involved but I don’t particularly see the revenue bump up.

There is a major danger in destroying the Forbes brand with the strategy which will hurt advertising/ conference/whatever revenue strategy growth. Why? Just like the Youtube problem, marketers want to know what they are getting with the quality that is published and they certainly won’t with the flood of new work coming out.

I have been writing weekly for Forbes.com now for two years and, based on the most viewed tab, am one of the more popular columnists. When I started, there were only several dozen contributors. That # went up to 250 you say in your piece, and now you might go up to 1000.

Basically, just about anyone can contribute to Forbes at this stage — which is absolutely destroying the Forbes brand. Now, by calling it a blog, you are destroying it even further (I would have suggested keeping a blog/ column format as the NYT does) or letting more contributors in but not calling it only a blog.

Blogs are so passe. By definition, blogs are less thought out with people spitting out several a day in some cases. I don’t care how smart you are, no one can write several great columns a week. With Quora coming out, the blog is dead.

What the media industry needs now is not opening the discussion lines to to anyone but editors who actually edit and know their stuff. And who can put out the work for the world’s truly great thinkers. That means getting the great columnists (cutting some like me if we are not up to par) and having journalists be journalists. We now have journalists becoming opinionists which is odd and destroys any credibility they have when they actually write work.

Thanks for engaging in the conversation. You make a number of statements. I would like to address one or two of them. You say, “Basically, just about anyone can contribute to Forbes at this stage.” Nothing could be more false. Our editors hand pick contributors based on their topic-specific knowledge and experience. In fact, when our editors consider a potential contributor they do so much like they would hire a full-time reporter or a freelance writer. The biggest difference is that the contributor is an Entrepreneurial Journalist, someone who produces quality content as part of an incentive-based program. As I mention in my post, different contributors accept different incentives.

As I also mention, Forbes is maintaining and strengthening its full-time staff of editors, journalists and reporters. Ours is a hybrid model in the best of all ways. The reality is that there are many, many people out there who are experts in their fields. They may not be “journalists,” but they have knowledge that is valuable to the Forbes audience. We are giving these authors, academics, business people and others the tools to share that knowledge with Forbes readers. In doing so, we are extending the Forbes brand, NOT diluting it, by inviting like-minded people into our product experiences.

Hello Lewis. I have an Australian news startup, launching next February, covering politics, business & employment/IR issues, that takes a similar approach. What The National Monitor will do is have a collaboration by experts(such as lawyers, scientists, academics, economists), graphic designers & journalists in the creation of news content. We’re also encouraging informed readers to contribute articles & information & will eventually ask some to join the team. This approach is taken because in Australia we find that the quality of news reporting is dumbed-down by the fact that many political & business journalists have no real understanding of their field & are doing the most basic & trivial reporting possible, avoiding the real issues. The collaboration solves this problem in that journalists will have be able to work with the people who do, which combined with their access & their ability to explain things, is a really good combination & should help improve the quality of journalism.

I think I need to add more to my last comment. I would suggest that you have your editors put more discretion into who they are allowing to post. In my area of expertise (China) more discretion is needed and what I stated was absolutely not false. I am not saying you need professional writers to post — allowing more to add to the debate is good — but you should have people who actually have something add to the debate.

Moreover, when you have someone post 33 times in 5 days by definition that is dilution.